


Space tomorrow...

by maharetr



Series: Imagine Bucky - maharetr post [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky would make a good dad, Future Fic, Gen, NASA, Parent Bucky Barnes, Past Relationship(s), Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 15:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10363770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: “But I’m gonna go to space!” Holly has her hands on her hips, glaring with all the seriousness she can muster.Bucky fights back a grin. “Quite possibly. But you’re not going there today, I’m sorry. Today is preschool. Space tomorrow, okay?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Imagine Bucky tumblr](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/), based on the prompt: "Imagine Bucky facing his greatest challenge yet: convincing his daughter to wear actual clothes to preschool instead of her astronaut suit she hasn't taken off all weekend." Posted 22 April 2016 [here](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/143214429373/imagine-bucky-facing-his-greatest-challenge-yet).

“But I’m gonna go to space!” Holly has her hands on her hips, glaring with all the seriousness she can muster.

Bucky fights back a grin. “Quite possibly. But you’re not going there today, I’m sorry. Today is preschool. Space tomorrow, okay?”

She relents, but only once she’s overseen him carefully hanging the costume in her closet for safe keeping.

Holly dives for it the moment she gets home: helmet on, talking intently to mission control. He records one of her missions where she dodges through the asteroid belt (around the coffee table), and out to a newly discovered planet (the couch).

Next morning, she pouts soulfully at him when he presents her clothes. “Sorry, kiddo,” he says. “Planet-based outfit for today.”

She sighs. “Space tomorrow,” she mutters determinedly, and lets Bucky help her out of the suit.

By the time hand over day comes, the cheap costume is grubby and starting to come apart at the seams.

“I’m thinking multiple suits, at both houses,” Bucky says to Louise. “It’s the only way we’re going to survive.”

Two hours later, Louise texts back a photo of a beaming Holly in a brand new space costume. _Are we taking bets on how long it’s going to take her to grow out of this?_

Bucky laughs. _…Well_ he types back. _She’s going to grow out of the *suit*…_

~*~

She grows out of the suit, and into elementary school and asking questions about everything and anything. They buy her a telescope and get her Meccano sets that are far more varied than what Bucky had had as a kid. Bucky spends a lot of time sitting googling with her, learning space travel history alongside her. They lose her to Space Camp every single year they can afford it, and she comes back _radiant_.

She grows into high school, and inhales the math and sciences. She reads _Contact_ , and everything else Carl Sagan related, obsessively. Both Bucky and Louise start calling her Ellie, and she beams with pride. He grins fondly at her through her crush on Jodie Foster.

Bucky approaches Tony, cautiously, looking for something more challenging than Meccano sets, than anything she’s learning at school. Tony raises his eyebrows, but offers her a set of tools and an older model Iron Man prototype, and they sit back to watch.

“She’s not that bad,” Tony says. And then even more impressively: “Does she want to come back next weekend?”

~*~

She hits the ground running into her engineering degree, and starts hitting up her Space Camp contacts. Life-long dreams suddenly start seeming a lot … closer. Bucky hesitates in the kitchen doorway one morning. Holly’s at the breakfast table, NASA brochures and forms scattered in front of her. There’s her fitness regime by the fridge. 

“I’m…” Bucky starts, and there’s enough in his tone that she looks up, and puts aside her pen. He sits down, and takes her hand in his. She takes his left in hers, reflexively, concerned. She’d grown up with the prosthetic; she’s never flinched from it.

“I’m going to say my piece,” he says. “And then I’ll _hold_ my peace, forever and ever, okay?”

She raises her eyebrows, but nods.

“I love you. And I’m so damn proud of you…” his voice catches. She squeezes his hands, and they smile damply at each other. “But I’m worried about the risks, too.”

He’d learned about the space race right alongside her. She saw the first moon walk, and Curiosity, and all he could see was the Challenger explosion, the horrible death count of the Soviet space program.

“Dad,” she says gently. “You went away to _war_ , okay?”

“And it fucked me up,” he says, just as softly. “You know it did.”

She grimaces and looks away.

She’d been a babe in arms when he finally went to trial. Louise and Bucky had talked it over at length, and gave her the Williams family name. Even after the acquittal, the name Barnes was weighed down with notoriety, too public, too heavy with history. He knows there are all sorts of Hydra documents and videos out there about him. He has never seen anything more than what he’d had to endure in the courtroom; he’s never asked what she’s researched on her own.

“I know,” she whispers.

“The war got me to here,” he says. “Indirectly, it got me you, and you are the best damn thing to happen to me, I swear. And I know that, well - you’ve got the Barnes genes in you. You probably are in fact going to find a wormhole, meet an alien species, broker friendly treaties, and come back to earth with eighteen hours of static for a five second free fall.”

She laughs, softly.

“Point is,” he continues. “I didn’t know what the war was going to do to me. And I don’t know what this might do to you. And I’m scared for you.”

“Dad…” she says. She tightens her grip in his. “This might kill me, for all I know. This might maim me, or chew me up and spit me out. But so might driving down the freeway. And this might be the most amazing, rewarding thing I’ve ever done, that I’ll ever do. And that’s… that’s worth the risks, to me.”

Bucky nods, slowly. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

~*~

She gets her acceptance letter into the Space Academy Program, and shrieks and cackles her way around the house and down the phone to Louise and everyone. Bucky dances her around the kitchen, and takes her out for the most expensive celebratory meal he can book in an afternoon’s notice. At her going away party, Bucky surprise-plays the video of preschool-Holly zooming around the coffee table/solar system, to her mortification and the whoops and cheers of her friends.

Astronaut training feels somehow much further away than being away at college. She sends video diaries, and they exchange long emails and Skype chats, and it helps.

Hours before her first launch, she calls home. “Hey, dad. How’s it going?” She’s doing her breathing exercises, controls against anxiety and stress. Then, just for a moment her control wavers into exhilarated laughter: “Space _today_ , dad! Space today!”

Bucky’s not in the slightest bit embarrassed to admit he cries like a baby.

Her launch is a triumph.


End file.
